Flight displays of aircraft systems continue to advance in sophistication, achieving increasingly higher levels of information density, and consequently, presenting a greater amount of visual information to be perceived and understood by the operator. It is important that aircraft visual displays and the associated user interfaces provide a proper cognitive mapping between the task desired from the system and the resulting implementation by the operator. As a result, such systems continuously attempt to improve instrumentation and control of the user interfaces that cooperate with the visual displays and overall aircraft systems.
Touch screen user interfaces have been advantageously used to improve user interaction in many types of systems outside of avionics, including widespread use in cell phones. Some touch screen user interfaces generate a tactile or haptic feedback in response to user inputs. Haptic feedback may provide cues that enhance and simplify the user interaction. Specifically, vibration effects may be useful to alert the user to specific events or to provide realistic feedback in the subject system. However, in certain applications, such as avionics, user interfaces with conventional haptic feedback are unsuitable for a number of reasons, including the size of the displays and the physical environment of flight.
Accordingly, it is desirable to improved user interfaces, particularly in an aircraft environment. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.